


Kerberos

by TTMIYH



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Alternian Invasion, Alternate Universe - Human/Troll Society (Homestuck), Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, Caliginous-Flushed Vacillation, Damnit I tried to write blackrom porn and it just ended up becoming heartfelt conversations, F/F, Fighting, Fighting Kink, Hair-pulling, Melodrama, Minor Violence, Nosebleed, Verbal Abuse, Verbal Humiliation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:02:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28477338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TTMIYH/pseuds/TTMIYH
Summary: "I'm sorry, I'm never really sure how to start these conversations. Should we... talk about ourselves? Is that a thing you care to do?" Rose spoke, more at the other girl than with her. "I'm Rose. Rose Lalonde, since my profile doesn't say last names.""Right." Jade replied, all gruff and startle. Startling to Rose, that is."And you are?""Jade.""Mmhmm. Jade... what?""Jade." She repeated, arms furled over her arms. For a second, Rose thought she was blowing her a raspberry, but no, it was just puffing loose, wavy black bangs out of her face. "Do you really need to know more?"
Relationships: Jade Harley/Karkat Vantas, Jade Harley/Rose Lalonde, Rose Lalonde/Kanaya Maryam
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16





	1. Chapter 1

"So."

"So."

The two girls stared at each other, Rose, with her hands politely folded together, and Jade, leaning back in a chair in a most uncouth manner. Rose was dressed appropriately to the occasion, with a billowy jade sundress, purple embroidery and thread giving it a touch of Her. Jade was wearing a grime-stained t-shirt and jeans, like she had just finished working on an imperial cruiser, oil streaking like underoxygenated blood (human) across her top. A knot tied at the bottom, revealing a somewhat appealing sliver of skin to the onlooking jadeblood. Rose let out an awkward little "Heh-hem".

"I'm sorry, I'm never really sure how to start these conversations. Should we... talk about ourselves? Is that a thing you care to do?" Rose spoke, more _at_ the other girl than _with_ her. "I'm Rose. Rose Lalonde, since my profile doesn't say last names."

"Right." Jade replied, all gruff and startle. Startling to Rose, that is.

"And you are?"

"Jade."

"Mmhmm. Jade... what?"

"Jade." She repeated, arms furled over her arms. For a second, Rose thought she was blowing her a raspberry, but no, it was just puffing loose, wavy black bangs out of her face. "Do you really _need_ to know more?"

"Mmm. No, I don't suppose I need it. I would definitely appreciate the information asymmetry not being quite so lopsided, but, I suppose a girl must have her privacy on occasion. I'm not sure what point it carries, since I could easily just ask my patron to dig up your files, but, if we're going to be testy I guess this is a great way to get off on that wrong foot, isn't it, Jade?"

"It's just Jade." The other girl replied brusquely.

"Ah." Rose responded, nodding with intelligent understanding. "You're a stray. I'm sorry to hear that."

"Fuck off." Jade snapped back, although oddly lacking in bite. Less of a bark or a yelp and more of a... declaration, perhaps. Rose was indeed a bit mystified by this mystery woman, who somehow was able to make it into the partnering system hemononymously. Mystified in a way that made her all the more appealing, the thorniest roses the most beautiful, the most difficult pomegranates bearing the most delightful seeds, and so on the metaphor train curled until it ran out of steam somewhere in the recesses of Rose's brain. "I don't like you, you don't have to pretend to like me, let's just pail and get this over with so we can both go back to whatever it was we were doing before this shit."

"Temper, temper! I have no inclination of rushing this. How awful would it be to let a good caliginous partner pass me by just because they lacked the patience to properly feel out their pitch throes?" Rose replied, leaning her elbows onto the table, her chin into her palms, and her entire body forward with mildly unsettling enthusiasm. A small part of Rose, a part being nurtured and blooming within the world she lived in, took solace in these little acts of sadism. The way Jade's body shifted as if struck by Rose's assiduous verbal barbs. "No, I insist we do things the good and proper way."

Jade leaned back a little further on her chair. "And what if I don't want to, Rose Lalonde?"

Rose leaned a little forward, trying not to chuckle like a movie villain. "Well, either you're higher than I am and you use your authority to end this, you're lower than I am and should just shut up and take it, or we both have Jade - excuse me, - jadeblooded patrons and we have to beat the shit out of each other for the rite of decision making. Why don't you tell me about your patron and we can see where our dice fall?"

Jade makes a disgusting sounding noise, and before Rose can really process what exactly it is, spits an impressive glob of saliva at Rose's direction. It misses her, albeit by inches. "Beat it out of me then. I don't think you can."

Rose kicked her own chair out backwards, standing up, rising to her full, unimpressive height of five foot two. Jade, who she half-expected to flinch, did not. Instead, she got up, slower, more sure of herself, and rose, cracking her back, at least a good eight inches taller than Rose was, and dappled with musculature where Rose had dainty, beautiful softness. "Gladly."

For the first time since she had arrived, Jade smiled, jerking her neck sharply to the left, and then to the right, each snap resulting in a loud, echoic crack that reverberated throughout the room. While Rose slowly walked towards Jade, trying to look intimidating, the other girl just rolled her arms back and forth, like she was getting ready for a fight. She even got into a little boxing stance, fists up to protect her face, which was utterly meaningless when Rose strolled up to her and kneed her in the crotch.

Jade went cross-eyed immediately, letting out an entirely unbecoming squeak as she stumbled backwards towards the bed, while Rose took three steps forward and, grabbing a hold of Jade's hips, immediately kneed her a second time. Jade took a wild haymaker swing, and Rose dodged out of the way, kneeing her a _third_ time, although this time in the thigh, coupled with a kick to the shin. While Jade bent downwards to protect herself, Rose reached up to grab a chunk out of her hair, close to the scalp (she didn't want to _injure_ her, just _hurt_ her, after all), and tightened her grip, yanking Jade down to the firm, tiled ground.

"Do you think you have some kind of advantage here just because you can lift heavier weights?" Rose hissed triumphantly. "You're holding back because you know if you hurt me you might get culled. I don't like that one bit. Swing, or I'm getting you in, as the kids say, some _real_ shit."

Then, tugging Jade back to her feet, joined by a choir of "Ow ow ow ow ow"'s, she let go, immediately stepping backwards to dodge Jade's next two haymakers. "Aim!" Rose yelled, only to be immediately caught with a flying knee to the stomach, her short-cut hair grabbed tight by the ends and yanked backwards to toss Rose to the floor. Getting up, she brushed down her dress, and then wiped a little trickle of blood from her nose, peeking down at the cherry red before clapping twice. "There we go. I am satisfied. You don't need to tell me a thing."

"You're insane." Jade said, rather matter-of-factly, as she limped over to the bed to sit down somewhere softer than one of the provided chairs. Rose quickly joined, rubbing the back of her neck, more or less completely ignoring her nosebleed, sitting down next to Jade and leaning in on her. At first instinct, Jade jerked away from Rose, leaving the shorter girl to collapse dramatically into Jade's lap, stretching her arms up and out.

"Yes, I get that a lot. I like you, Jade No-last-name." Rose said, reaching up to gently touch Jade's face. Despite herself, Jade couldn't help her own body's natural inclination to lean into it, so she jerked away harder. "I think you're perfectly disgusting, and I would love to smother you between my legs until you're indigo from lack of oxygen."

Jade sighed and flopped back onto the bed. "Let me guess, I don't have a choice, and if I try to have one, you'll sic drones on me or some shit?"

Rose laughed, a deep, rumbling belly laugh entirely unbefitting someone like her. "Of course not. You're free to move onto someone else after this date. I just don't think you will."

"And what makes you so confident of that?" Jade asked, trying to ignore the rolling Rose coiling herself around Jade, moving from a lap to her side, the oozing warmth of fresh nosebleed staining the shoulder of her t-shirt. Rose's hand draw gentle circles on her exposed stomach, while her ankle tried to keep itself in steady contact with Jade's ankle.

"I will not mince words here. I am a jadeblood. I am not particularly high-class, other than the high-class of the tastes that me and my patron share. I am solidly middle of the road. I have made it this far by being intelligent enough to figure out others before they figure me out." Rose explained, continuing to trace gentle patterns up Jade's skin. "You're certainly strong enough to break my neck at such a close range, and I'm middling enough that you might not even be culled for it, and aggravating enough that I can feel you considering it under your skin. But you haven't, and you won't."

"Maybe I won't. Maybe I will." Jade replied, one arm wrapping around Rose's back and then slinking up so that it was wrapped around the back of her neck instead. Pinning her close. "It would be _so_ easy."

Rose purred like a cat, wrapping one leg over Jade's thigh, squeezing herself close. "That's why I like you, Jade. Everyone else? Cowards. I knee them in the crotch once or twice and all the fight goes out of them, no matter how hard I try. They just give up! It's absurd."

"It's a perfectly understandable reaction based on learned helplessness behaviors." Jade responded, and Rose just had to laugh.

"You still believe that old-world dribble? No wonder you... Never mind." Rose said, coughing as Jade's arm tightened, momentarily. Despite her willing to talk a big talk, realistically, Rose didn't want to die - but she did want to get to the _edge_ , to really find someone that could rough her up and she could rough them back and they've have just a mutually enjoyable time hatefucking the everloving shit out of each other, to put it mildly. "I like you, Jade. I want to pull your hair and hit you with a paddle. I want to have you under lock and key. I want to lead you around with a little leash and parade you like the shitblood I don't doubt for a second you are."

"Are you trying to provoke me?" Jade asked, tilting her head over to glance at the face-bloodied Rose.

"Why, is it working?" Rose asked, with a shit-eating grin.


	2. Chapter 2

"So!"

"So."

The two girls stared at each other, Rose, with her fingers curled, laced together, chin on the tops of her knuckles, and Jade, leaning back in a chair in a most uncouth manner. Rose was dressed appropriately to the occasion, a white blouse laced with touches of jade and a dark black pencil skirt, along with a jade green cloth choker. Jade was wearing a grime-stained t-shirt and jeans, although, to her credit, a different t-shirt than the week before (Legislacerator was out on the jeans, however). It was, of course, still tied at the bottom. "You came back."

Jade scowled, Rose grinned, everyone was making faces at everyone else. "Don't take this like some kind of condoning of your "skills as a kismesis" or whatever." Jade brusquely responded, making air quotes at the appropriate time, somehow avoiding tilting all the way back on her chair. Her balance was impeccable, impressively so. "I don't have anything else to do so I might as well force some uppity bitch to give me head."

"That's the spirit." Rose replied, laughing hysterically between every other word. "Let the hate flow through you."

"Alright, Anakin." Jade replied, and Rose's face immediately twitched. What she intended as a little fun pop culture reference has been turned against her - already, the mind-games have begun, it seems.

"It's. It was Emperor Palpatine." She corrected her.

"Yeah. Anakin Palpatine, right? I'm sorry, I've never watched Star Trek before. It's banned for rustbloods."

Rose could feel a vein on her forehead pulsate with blood and heat fill her ears. She took a deep, calming breath, and smiled a placid, meditative smile in Jade's direction. "Right. Anakin Palpatine. You are very funny, Jade, and your jokes are hilarious. Positively rip-roaring. Hysterical." She said, barely even catching Jade's comment about her blood color - was she bluffing? Or was it just an extension of the _obviously_ wrong statements made about a fairly popular science fantasy series? Rose had begun second guessing herself and barely a sentence had been exchanged either way. Was she overthinking herself in circles?

"They're better than yours." Jade said, kicking her feet up onto the table, grimy work boots scattering a small spray of mud onto the pristine surface. Rose felt a tiny pinprick of anger working her way up from the base of her spine, up into her neck, blooming into a rapid migraine. She was being made a fool of. She never considered herself a particularly sensitive or easy to fluster person, but here she was, her chosen kismesis, effortlessly making a court jester out of her with only the slightest expression of oxygen from between her big dumb lips. It made Rose boil. "Do you have jokes, or is your personality just made of pop culture references?"

Rose squeezed her fists together, trying not to slam the table with them. "I think we're really blowing one little sentence fairly far out of proportion, don't you? Why don't we move on to something we both find mutually enjoyable rather than thoroughly mutilating this particular horse until it has become little more than a pile of ground meat?"

Jade clicked her heels against the table three times, one, two, three. "I don't know, I'm having a lot of fun making you squirm. Maybe there is something to this whole "kismesis" thing, huh? That said, you sure seem to be making a big deal out of this little joke."

" _Ggah!_ " Rose yelped, like an angry dog. Obviously, blackrom was a two way street, but Rose was not enjoying being on the back foot so much. Here she was, a rude, dirty hemoanon (possible _rustblood_ , even), making a steady fool of Rose, second after second, when not a week ago it was Rose on the winning end of the gambit. Sure, there was give and take, but Rose wasn't expecting to have any serious challenge in anywhere besides the physical circuit. A good roughhousing partner for a casual fuck, and little more. Someone she could lord herself over intellectually and then have a satisfying scrap with. Where was this verbal sparring partner in that taciturn competitor from last week?

"You feeling alright, jadeblood princess?" Jade asked, clearly feigning genuine concern. "Didn't mean to hurt your feelings for real."

"Don't give me your pity." Rose coughed, brushing her bangs out of her hair, taking in a deep breath, and centering herself. She adjusted her headband and ran her fingers back through her hair until it was back in place. "We're not here for that, remember?"

"Right, you're here to get fucking trounced by someone who you assumed you were smarter than." Jade answered, brushing her bangs out of her face, mirroring Rose passive-aggressively. "Sorry, I'm not used to being such a mean person. I guess my patron is rubbing off on me!"

Ah, now there was something she could lean into. Rose put her elbows on the table and pushed her seat in closer. "And who would that be?"

"What, you've never heard of Karkat Vantas?" Jade asked, and Rose's face committed a most involuntary of spasms. "Some big shot jadeblood princess you are."

Of course she had heard of Karkat. He wasn't a celebrity, just a military hero who led the charge and personally executed the corrupt World Government that came before Rose was old enough to have memories. A name in textbooks, but not someone talked about every day. And... he was hemononymous, of course, a provision allowed only by his skill as a commander, and his legendary temper.

 _Damnit_!

"Of course I've read my textbooks. I've been schoolfed like the rest of you. There's no way your matesprit is someone as important as him." Rose said, calling Jade's bluff. She reached into her pocket and fished out a small signet ring with his symbol on it, slapping it on the table. "Counterfeit."

Jade laughed. Rose had never been more humiliated in her entire life, but obviously, there was no way she would let this go unanswered. This just meant that she would need to work even harder to take down this bigger prey. Oh, she could taste it now, the satisfaction of bending Jade to her whim with practiced verbal barbs and skilled fists and dirty fighting. It would be even sweeter now that she knew that she was actually someone moderately important, and not some attractive nobody.

"Fine. You've got me on the defensive and I'm lashing out, Jade Vantas." Rose replied, shrugging her shoulders. "I can still-"

"Don't call me that." Jade interrupted.

"Did I strike a nerve?" Rose asked, lurching forward into the table enthusiastically.

"Unlike you, I'm willing to actually talk about my emotions up-front with my partners instead of hiding them behind five layers of tricky language. Yes, you did, and if you continue striking it I will break your neck and deal with the consequences later. Let's keep this a casual, simmering level of hatred until we're both more certain about how we feel about each other to really start digging for shit to attack. Fuck." Jade said, her voice growing louder, more stern with every passing word, until Rose was flinching away in the chair like she had just been struck. She put her legs down, kicked the chair out from behind her, and stood up, now properly _looming_ over Rose. "What, no more snark left now that you know there's consequences to your actions? Act like a fucking adult. Fucking unbelievable. You have the emotional maturity of a wriggler."

Rose started to sniffle, and then she started to cry. Not very hard, mind, not some sort of all-out sob, but tears stung at the edges of her vision, yes. As she breathed heavily, very slightly rocking in her chair, covering up her face in her elbows. She could see Jade having turned around, walking towards the door, fully prepared to cut this session short and, along with it, cut her losses. When Jade stopped at the door, Rose just lowered her head a little further, feeling an incalculable amount of shame burning through her skin, tainting it ugly red.

Then, Jade turned back around, and stomped back towards Rose, passing the safe threshold demarcated by the table, grabbing her hair. Rose half-expected to get her head slammed into the table, and her body tensed up, bracing for it pre-emptively, and then Jade's hand pulled her hairband off, letting her bleached white strands fall all over her face in an unruly mop.

Then, Jade started patting her back. "There, there, you blubbering goddamn pansy." Rose let out a choked little noise and just started crying into the table. "Look. I'm sure there's people who like you, but you are a fucking asshole. You come in rocket-hot. You are just needlessly antagonistic for, like, no fucking reason. I am sure there's a very pleasant Rose Lalonde underneath that but I think you're trying to force this way harder than it has to be."

Rose sniffled. "And who made you an expert on the "right way" to do this?"

"My matesprit. He likes romcoms, and makes me watch them with him." Jade answered, and Rose had to stifle a laugh. Then, she failed to stifle it. "Yeah yeah, fucking yuk it up."

"Good, I will. That's objectively ridiculous." Rose responded, letting out a couple of taunting "Hah!"s, and Jade pulled away to walk over to the provided bed, flopping down onto it backwards, arms splayed out.

"Yeah, well, we've all got our hobbies somehow. And where'd you learn how to date, Alternian period dramas?"

Rose was completely silent.

"Oh my god, you really did, didn't you?"

**Author's Note:**

> All comments, kudos, bookmarks, and views are seen, noted, and greatly appreciated. Thank you for reading.
> 
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